Eliot Spitzer, Emperor's Club and Homestead

Last week was unusually exciting around the old Homestead offices, thanks to our brush with one of the more newsworthy events of the decade.  It turns out that the high-end prositution ring Elitot Spitzer has confessed to patronizing--Emperor's Club VIP--built their website using Homestead.

To be clear, we do not monitor the content of the sites built using Homestead... we have way too many sites to monitor, even if we wanted to.  What's more, it turns out that for legal reasons we cannot monitor our customers sites unless they are brought to our attention by a complaint, the legal authorities, or a call from the owner of the site or other "normal course of business."

So, when news broke like a tsunami last Monday about the Spitzer site, and every web browser in the free world starting hitting www.emperorsclubvip.com (and within minutes had taken down the New York Times and www.ny.gov websites) Homestead's servers started receiving almost 150% of their normal traffic.  The good news is that our servers handled the traffic just fine.  The bad news is that our system soon automatically disabled the site because it had exceeded (big time) it's alloted gigabytes of traffic and guess what everybody saw instead?  A friendly Homestead logo and a message stating "Sorry, the site you are looking for is temporarily unavailable because it has exceeded its bandwidth limits."

Old board members called.  My new employer called.  NBC Dateline (and other press) called.  My mom even called (you can imagine what that conversation was like).

But that's not the whole story.  It turns out, unbeknownst to me, that the FBI had contacted us a few months ago and informed us about emperorsclubvip.com and asked us to cooperate with their sting operation.  This is not as unusual (or Hollywood) as it sounds.  We get several inquiries like this from law authorities every month, and we actually have a well-practiced process that dictates how we balance cooperating with criminal inquiries while also protecting the privacy of our customers.  In this case, because of the evidence presented by the FBI--which corroborated with data on the site--we agreed to cooperate with their sting operation.

The FBI failed to mention their prime suspect was the governor of New York.

Thus, because this type of thing is unfortunately rather routine, I was not aware that we were involved with the investigation--or that it was a Homestead site--until everybody else.

Which brings me back to why last week was so eventful.  It brought into public view an aspect of our business that has been central to much of Homestead's ten year history.  Something that Intuit, our new parent company, has never had to deal with--until last week. 

When you introduce a technology or tool to society, you are not in control of how it is used.  Most of the time inventors are not even aware of how their invention is ulimately used, but when the technology is on the internet, you can actually WITNESS it.  This is a beautiful thing--people do amazing things with it that you (the creator) never imagined.  This is also a terrifying thing--people do things that you wish they wouldn't, or which violate your sense of right and wrong.  There are many sites hosted at Homestead which are legal, but make my skin crawl (see www.michaelsavage.com).  Even though I despise what sites like that say, I really would die to defend their right to say it.

Luckily for us, over the years less than 1/100th of one percent of our (millions of) sites have come to our attention as being objectionable or illegal.  But each time we have had to balance the rights of our customers to use this platform that we nurtured and created with the laws of the country and our responsibilities as a business.

When all the dust settled last week, the feeling I was left with was what a great privilege it is to have created (and still run) a business that has such interesting ethical, constitutional, and social implications.

Now if I could only get my new parent company to enjoy it as much as I do. :o)

--jsk 

Comments

[R. B. Chandler]

Think of it as free advertising. I'm sure your new boss has people using their software with questionable intent. They just don't plaster all over the internet that some mob boss caught cheating on his taxes was using TurboTax. There is a balance that is needed between what is free speech and violations of TOS. I'm sure there is a way to turn this to your advantage from an advertising perspective by making fun of what happened. It should be noted that most of the Homestead customers are good people with great web sites thanks to Homestead. To balance out the bad there are people try to do something good in the world (see: http://www.unitedearth4peace.org). The good news is there are more good people than bad. Yes, it's serious, but we still live in a free country and now more than ever our freedoms need to be defended or we could end up with more than just cyber-police.

[Michael Glenn]

Hi, I've been trying to shut off the over-sensitive spam filtering on my account with Homestead for over 2 months now. How can I get a hold of someone over there at Homestead who can fix this, permanantly?

Sorry to use your personal blog to do this, but this is literally taking money out of our business, repeatedly.

Mike

[Dottie]

Fascinating story, Mr. Kitch! Thanks for sharing that!

You're doing a great job -- I love being a Homestead member!

Dottie

[Evocatus]

WHERE THE HECK IS THE WEBSITE OF PAT CONDELL!?!
HAVE YOU TAKEN IT OFFLINE BECAUSE OF HIS OPINIONS ABOUT ISLAM?
IF SO:
1. EXPLAIN.
2. GIVE PAT CONDELL HIS WEBSITE BACK! PRONTO!
Ave, Evocatus

[R. B. Chandler]

Pat has exceeded his bandwidth and according to his MySpace page is in the process of moving his web site. And, quite frankly, it is no great loss to Homestead, but is a good example of their tolerance for the sake of free speach and other such freedoms that we enjoy in this country.

[Patty Smith]

I guess you have to put in a good word for Mr. Kitch Dottie because he is afterall, your boss.

[Patty Smith]

"And, quite frankly, it is no great loss to Homestead,"

Review your creed #1:

1 Our first responsibility is to our Customers, for without customers we have no company. Everything that we do must be done with the customer in mind. We will do this by:
Never conceiving a product without taking into account how it meets the needs of a customer.
Always learning first hand from the customer during the design process.
Providing exceptional and personal attention to the needs, complaints, or comments of our customers.
Making customer satisfaction the ultimate measure of success—more than money, more than our own satisfaction, and more than publicity or hype. In the long term, we will only succeed if we meet our customers' needs with a better product and with better service.

You're saying that it's not a "great loss" that you've loss a customer, but here you are preaching that the customers is your number one priority?

[Dottie]

Quoting R.B. Chandler: "I guess you have to put in a good word for Mr. Kitch Dottie because he is afterall, your boss."

Huh???? Has it occurred to you there may be more than one Dottie in this world?

Dottie (retired -- have no boss, thank you!)

[Dottie]

Correction [Sorry 'bout that, R.B. Chandler]:

Quoting PATTY SMITH: "I guess you have to put in a good word for Mr. Kitch Dottie because he is afterall, your boss."

Huh???? Has it occurred to you there may be more than one Dottie in this world?

Dottie (retired -- have no boss, thank you!)

[R. B. Chandler]

The opinions of R. B. Chandler are in no way related to Homestead or represent the opinions of Homestead in any way. Nor is R. B. Chandler affiliated with Homestead in any way beyond beyond the use of their services in hosting my web site. With that said, I would be the first to stand up to defend the freedoms we hold most dear (free speech, free press, etc). That does not mean I in any way agree with what is being said. I do not care for intolerance of others in any form reguardless of race, religion, color, gender, etc. This is what is fueling much of the hatred in the world today. A handful of men fan the flames that stoke their own egos often at the expense of other peoples lives. Then we have the nerve to wonder why a kid walks into a classroom with a loaded handgun and starts shooting or why someone is willing to strap a bomb to their chest and walk in into a crowd of people. With freedom also comes the responsibility to use that freedom not only wisely but for the good of all.

[sharon kinsey]

Mr. Kitch:

You are the registrar of my domain and it is broken. No one at Homestead will talk to me because I no longer use your service. Your Hostmaster won't respond to emails.

I am not sorry about using your personal blog for this because you seem to think Homestead is something special in customer service. Far from it. Your service stinks.

Fix my domain or a lawsuit will follow. I am losing business. I can't even transfer the domain as I need an authorization code from Homestead and no one will respond.

[Jim]

Hi

Sorry to bother you here. Cannot get to Help because it requires logging into the account. Cannot log into the wwww.homestead.com/jimscott account because Homestead says it doesn't exist. It did. I have a record of it (complete with password) in my site info database. Entering my email just jumps to the other Homestead account I had opened (jasjr). Are we able to find/re-open the jimscott account? Please advise. Thanks.

jim

[Anne]

Hello,

Yet again, in the UK, I have received a letter suggesting/encouraging transfer of my web hosting company.

The logo on the envelope says 'Registration Services Incorporated' and the prepaid postal information states 'ISAL U.S. Postage Paid Jamaica, NY Permit No. 9114'.

I could send this to you, unopened, for your attention, if it might help you to do something about it...?

Anne.

[mark sigmund]

Hey Justin,
I have been trying to transfer my domain www.brigantinefishingreport.com to a new registrar for over a month. My domain name is registered to a homestead address or something because when you put the code in, it says email was sent to domain support, and that I must click on the link to continue. Given that I don't work for you guys, it is impossible to click on the link. I have talked to about 10 service reps, who have been nice, but unhelpful with the situation. I am starting to get frustrated. This is becoming a strain on my business, and hope to have this resolve this situation promptly, Thankyou, Mark Sigmund

[mark sigmund]

Hey Justin,
I have been trying to transfer my domain www.brigantinefishingreport.com to a new registrar for over a month. My domain name is registered to a homestead address or something because when you put the code in, it says email was sent to domain support, and that I must click on the link to continue. Given that I don't work for you guys, it is impossible to click on the link. I have talked to about 10 service reps, who have been nice, but unhelpful with the situation. I am starting to get frustrated. This is becoming a strain on my business, and hope to have this resolve this situation promptly, Thankyou, Mark Sigmund

[Jeff Paul Internet Millions]

Thanks for bringing this to my attention - I’ve reviewed it myself now. A very enjoyable read

[Teri Miller Barker]

hi justin,

i've been a homestead customer for a little over a year, and it has been a great experience. customer service is always friendly and professional. also, from reading your blogs, and hearing your voice on the automated greeting, you appear to be a genuinely good person.

may God bless you in all of your endeavors!

see you at www.thewriteawaycafe.com.

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